we're on the verge of seeing spacex's fully reusable Starship rocket go orbital but we may
need to wait just a little longer that's because an unexpected explosion during super heavy engine
tests has put any further plans momentarily on hold the dramatic event took place at 5 20 PM
Eastern Time July 11th at spacex's Boca Chica facility in Texas the site SpaceX aims to use
for starship's orbital launch shortly after the incident SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the
company had shut down the pad for the night for safety and that they will know more in the morning
last week SpaceX shared images of Starship making its way to the launch pad for testing SpaceX
had recently received the green light from the Federal Aviation Authority after it published its
environmental review of Starship with the caveat that the company has to fulfill 75 requirements
SpaceX is no stranger to explosive tests last year the company carried out several suborbital
test flights with a Starship prototype several of these ended with an explosive Landing attempt
however SpaceX made it clear that explosions on the landing pad didn't mean failure
it was always collecting data that would help it improve its design and make it less likely
another explosion would occur and eventually it did land a Starship prototype on the launch
pad shortly after performing a bold flip maneuver while SpaceX will undoubtedly learn lessons from
this latest setback the issue may be a little more Troublesome than last year's explosive incidents
that's because musk only recently said he hopes an orbital Starship launch will take place this month
the test that took place yesterday was carried out on a prototype of super heavy called booster 7.
the massive first stage booster was fitted with 33 Raptor 2 engines prior to testing
the explosion occurred shortly after the engines were fired up
on first inspection the explosion didn't seem to do substantial damage to the booster
musk in fact pointed out in a tweet that the base of the vehicle seems okay after he took a look
with a flashlight though SpaceX will know more in the morning all we know for now is that the issue
may have been caused by a complication related to the cryogenic fuel Starship requires for liftoff
cryogenic fuel is an added challenge as it evaporates to create fuel air explosion risk
in a partial oxygen atmosphere like Earth musk wrote in a separate tweet that said we have a
lot of sensors to detect this more later NASA has released one of the clearest and best images
of deep space in human history from the James Webb Space Telescope the images were unveiled
during a special event Tuesday July 12 at NASA's Goddard space flight center in Greenbelt Maryland
this day gives a new meaning to as far as the eye can see representative steny Hoyer from Maryland
said during a news conference the vision of the world is greater today than it was yesterday
it will Renown to the benefit to all people of this Earth
the four Images released Tuesday included the Karina nebula the southern Ring Nebula Stefan's
quintet and the spectrum of wasp 96b NASA unveiled the first of five images in a sneak peek Monday
night with President Biden showing the first Deep Field image at a White House Press briefing
the web telescope essentially looks back in time some 13.5 billion years
that's possible because of the distance many of these deep space objects are and the amount
of time it takes for light to travel from them to our eye for comparison's sake the James Webb Space
Telescope sits about 1 million miles from Earth currently at a spot called LaGrange point two
at the speed of light Webb is essentially 1.7 light years from us right now
and the images it is sending are of images 13.5 billion light years away
the sun is about 93 million miles away and its light takes about 8.3 minutes to get to us Webb's
journey to this point has been a long one it launched from Earth on December 25th 2021 and took
30 days to get to its current location at LaGrange point 2. that specific spot in space allows Webb
to orbit at the same rate as Earth giving it a sunscreen of sorts from its home planet
the 10 billion dollar project is designed to send it on a mission that will last five to ten years
the project took 40 million total hours to build including thousands of scientists engineers and
technicians from 14 countries and 29 U.S states it was first conceptualized starting in 1989
and construction began back in 2004. Webb has spent the last few months going through
cooldown telescope alignment and other procedures allowing it to get ready for all its experiments
we'll see spectacular releases from web frequently in the future but for now
here's a look at the individual images unveiled Tuesday representing the first to come from web
the final image released during the event was probably the most visually spectacular
this Karina nebula image shows a collection of stars and gas some 8
000 light years away relatively close the area shows Stars we've never seen before
and even elements that scientists have never seen before thanks to the infrared capabilities of web
every bright dot in the image is a star many of which are similar to our sun so many of them also
likely have similar planetary structures nearby the second image released was of the Southern Ring
Nebula the southern Ring Nebula is a planetary nebula despite planet in the name these aren't
planets they're shells of dust and gas shed by dying sun-like Stars the new details from
Webb will transform our understanding of how Stars evolve and influence their environments
some Stars Save The Best For Last the dimmer star at the center of this scene
has been sending out rings of gas and dust for thousands of years in all directions and NASA's
James Webb Space Telescope has revealed for the first time that this star is cloaked in dust
Stefan's Quintet this image shows five giant galaxies containing hundreds upon hundreds
of billions of stars four of the five galaxies visible are actually interacting with each other
while the fifth the one on the left is actually much closer to Earth so is nowhere near the others
there are 150 million pixels in this image and it's actually a composite of about 1 000 image
files the first New Image released Tuesday was the spectrum of an extrasolar planet called wasp 96b
this is a planet that's roughly half the size of Jupiter and the image is being released to
showcase the science that Webb can do so while it's not a cool visual image there's a lot of
incredible science in this and that wraps up today's episode we would also like to take
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